"One old and one young? Who are they?" I asked with surprise.
"My elder cousin and his younger son. Huh, the son is exactly like his father."
"I suppose they have come to see you and at the same time take in the sights of the city?"
"No. He says that he wants to talk to me about my adopting that boy."
"Oh," I said with astonishment. "But you aren't married, are you?"
"They know that I am not going to marry. But that does not matter. What they really want is to adopt that old house of ours in Cold Stone Mountain. I have nothing besides this old house as you know; I spend everything as soon as I get it. This dilapidated house is the one thing I own. The only interest that my cousin and his sons have in life seems to be to drive out the old maidservant who is living in it."
The bitterness with which he said this chilled me. I tried to comfort him: "I do not think that your kinsmen could be that bad. Their only fault is that they are somewhat oldfashioned and reactionary in their thinking. I remember that they were very solicitous and eager to comfort you when you cried so sorrowfully at the funeral."
"They were just as solicitous and eager to comfort me when my father died, though that did not prevent them from trying to make me sign away my house." He looked up and stared into empty space as if trying to form a picture of just what had happened then.
"In a word, the crux of the matter is that you have no children. Why is it that you would not marry?" Finally I hit upon the subject which I had had in mind for so long a time;
